Fëfé Oráiste, Artist by Tim Lane

Artist, mother, daughter, health care worker, creative Fëfé Oráiste (@hotjoy.art) started working on a body of small watercolors a while back because she needed to know that she was still an artist. She needed more than daily life. When serious creatives get pulled in many directions—by parenthood, day jobs, ailing parents— the concern that we might not get to be creative again, that our creative identity is about to be consumed and snuffed out by life’s obligations, looms real. I remember worrying about this when I was a new parent. I remember wondering while I was fully engaged with my novel if I would ever write poetry again.

So the artist began getting up early to paint. When we first met, she painted. As time went by, she moved into performance. These watercolors are brightly colored and full of personality, and I really like them.

Just wanted to share them with you. If I were still directing a gallery, then there would have been a show.

You can find all of the paintings here.

<Insert Infamous Risky Business Quote Here> by Tim Lane

As the anniversary of the release of my 80s coming-of-age novel nears, I’m flipping the mixtape!

As Stuart Page would ask, “Now what?”

The paperback option that many of you have requested is a thing!

Paperback copies of Your Silent Face are now available at Amazon, brought to you by my publishing imprint, In Love with Plaid Press.

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About Tim Lane’s 80s coming-of-age novel, Your Silent Face…

“The reader will likely be reminded of Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel High Fidelity or possibly Richard Linklater’s 1993 film Dazed and Confused; Lane’s tale is similarly episodic and digressive and more dedicated to re-creating the feeling of a time and place than telling a cohesive story. Even so, the sharp prose and inviting energy help it to succeed where similar novels fail. Readers will enjoy following Stuart’s thought processes, wherever they lead.” —Kirkus Reviews

What lies ahead that doesn’t suck? Summer break forces Stuart Page to return home and wrestle with his fraying ties to the East Side of Flint, his memory an archive of cassettes he would like to erase. His freshman year of college was lame. More early Cure than Spandau Ballet, he might be overheard saying. More Gary Numan than Falco.

Flustered by visits from a stoic viking, fueled by an endless supply of beer, Stu picks apart an obsession with the lead singer of Joy Division and chugs the sour dregs of insecurity as he drunkenly veers through Flint’s blue collar fight culture, summer hook ups, the aftereffects of Old School Catholicism and Reaganomics in Your Silent Face.

Key words: #fiction #comingofage #80smusic #NewWave #GenX #RustBelt #NativeAmerican #graffiti #urbanpoetry

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Check out the companion Spotify playlist!

Thibault Cauvin by Tim Lane

I have a new musical love: French classical guitarist, Thibault Cauvin.

This album, which is a collaboration with many other renown musicians, is great for chilling.

I especially like track nine, “New York-Mad Rush.” This track was my introduction.

The B52s, Thank God by Tim Lane

What is your favorite B52s album? It’s not an easy question. On any given day, I could say Whammy, or Wild Planet, or their self-titled album from 1979. One thing is certain in my mind, though: 1979-1983 were their golden years. I couldn’t get enough of those three albums.

And remember when the DJ played “Rock Lobster” at the dances, and everyone spiraled down to the floor and lay on their backs and shook their arms and legs in the air at the crescendo of that musical spiral? The dances were the best. Yeah, they were filled with a lot of anxiety, too—would anyone dance with me? would I dance with so-and-so? would I meet anybody new? But that was part of it. Most of the time, I didn’t; once in a while, I did. Dancing to good tunes was fun, though. So much sweat; just letting go; lost in the music, darkness, flashing lights.

Good times.

Fred was so intense. I loved it. That guy could bang a tambourine!

I think my favorite B52s song is “Give Me Back My Man” just saying.

Does anyone remember that Cindy Wilson and Ricky Wilson were siblings, and that Ricky Wilson died of AIDs in 1985 at the age of 32? So sad. His death had a profound effect on the band for several years.

The band had a huge effect on me. They helped me let my hair down and have fun during those tough adolescent years.

#B52s #NewWave #80s #GenX #geneverybody #postpunk

A Patriotic Painting by Tim Lane

Patriotic Painting, 2006mixed media on canvas40”x30”

Patriotic Painting, 2006

mixed media on canvas

40”x30”

In Which Is Recounted the Writing & Reading Pursuits of Your Preoccupied Blogger by Tim Lane

A third Blade Runner poem is coming soon. I am also making progress on a new painting. And I am reading a very interesting book: The Long 1980s. I am also reading Malina, by Ingeborg Bachmann, and The Cyborg Manifesto, by Donna J. Haraway. Also, watched Stop Making Sense the other night. It holds up.

Oh, and I am reading Philip K. Dick’s final interview, which in part has also been fueling the Blade Runner poems.

Another Blade Runner Poem by Tim Lane

I always paint in series. I guess I’m writing a poetry series, now, too. Here’s another Blade Runner poem. The films (Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049) fascinate me to no end.

As usual, the poem is mine, but I do not own any rights to the image.

#BladeRunner2049 #BladeRunner #ryangosling #contemporaryart #contemporarypoetry #poetry #lovelansing #GenX #cyberpunk #philipkdick #doandroidsdreamofelectricsheep #thebladerunnerpoems

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A New Blade Runner Poem for Agent KD6-3.7 by Tim Lane

It has become pretty clear to me that I have begun working on a new series of poems inspired by the Blade Runner films, and by Philip K. Dick’s last interview which was published under the title What If Our World Is Their Heaven. Naturally, I have started referring to these new poems as the Blade Runner poems.

The Impostor

for Agent KD6-3.7


In Blade Runner,

Rachel’s childhood memory—

of baby spiders

hatching from a spider’s

egg before

devouring the mother—

have been

implanted, are like

newts

wriggling under the

thin skin of her

wrist. Androids, of course,

are engineered,

do not have mothers.

Rachel falls in love

with the central character

who hunts down

rogue androids—

& she suffers.

A devoted mother

might have

warned her not to fall

in love with a murderer. Might have

breezed into her

room & swept away the

nastiness of the

spider living outside the

window. In his final

interview, Philip K. Dick

claims to have

written the first story

about an android

that believes it is human.

The cruel

revelation comes

as a shock,

just as it did for Rachel.

Just as a salamander

wriggling under one’s

skin might

paralyze one with

bone-chilling

fear. The title of Dick’s

story is “The Impostor.” 

I am

warning you,

all of us have hatched

painful moments

we can’t undo or recognize.

Once implanted,

you would do well

to destroy those

memories.

#BladeRunner2049 #BladeRunner #ryangosling #contemporaryart #contemporarypoetry #poetry #lovelansing #GenX #cyberpunk #philipkdick #doandroidsdreamofelectricsheep #thebladerunnerpoems


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